Global energy firm RWE has finalised its investment decision for two battery energy storage systems (BESS) totalling 220MW, in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany.
The BESS units will be installed at RWE power plants in Neurath and Hamm, both in the western state which borders the Netherlands and Belgium, using a total of 690 lithium-ion battery system blocks.
The new systems will contribute to the stabilisation of the German electricity grid and will be ‘networked virtually’ with the adjacent power plants, allowing optimisation of the assets.
The system at Hamm will total 140MW of power while Neurath will be an 80MW system, while a press release said the systems will have a duration of “over an hour”. A similar duo of projects which RWE is set to bring online this month have a duration of 1.14 hours (112MW/128MWh).
RWE is undertaking the project design, modelling, system integration and commissioning in-house, and expects to start construction next year for a 2024 commissioning date. The projects amount to €140 million (US$129 million) of investment.
Roger Miesen, CEO of RWE Generation, said: “This investment decision paves the way for a future-looking project that will set new standards in terms of size as well as intelligent networking. Our new battery storage system will optimise the utilisation of our German power plant fleet, and in tandem they will provide balancing energy.”
It is the latest in a series of high-profile announcements on large battery storage projects in the German market, which has marked a turnaround after the country installed just 32MW of grid-scale (1MW-plus) projects last year.
Around 200MW is set to have come online over the course of 2022 and projects like RWE’s and Fluence’s 250MW Grid Booster for transmission system operator TransnetBW are set to massively expand the country’s pool of flexibility resources to help it hit renewables targets.
RWE currently operates 150MW/160MWh of battery storage and is developing 800MW/1,800MWh of projects worldwide, with ambitions to have built 3GW by 2030. Recently commissioned units include a 60MW system in Ireland (covered by sister site Solar Power Portal) and a 40MW solar-plus-storage battery system in Georgia, US.
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